


let us not be lonesome (lost between our needs and wants)

by raewastaken (IWriteLove)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, FakeHaus, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 18:17:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6125689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IWriteLove/pseuds/raewastaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He pretends his lips don't tingle as he lays in the spare bedroom, and ignores how his heart beats in his chest, and knows he's irrational, because he wasn't meant to love and be loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let us not be lonesome (lost between our needs and wants)

**Author's Note:**

> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)  
> dedicated to [patrickrodriguez](http://patrickrodriguez.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr bcus ksu drug me down into fucking risingsonn hell and ive only been promising them risingsonn for weeks and i finally got around to it thank jesus. i hope u enjoy ksu. u sinner.

Jon walks into the Fakehaus’ apartment covered in blood, and not one of them bats an eye. 

It’s something they’re all used to by now, something that’s become a regular occurrence every few days, if not every day, and Jon still isn’t used to their casual approach to it, even after months. He doesn’t know  _ how _ they could be so calm about it, about the red down the front of his shirt, dripping off his hair, smudged on his cheek where he went to wipe away sweat. When he ran with Miles’ group, the little mercenary crew he threw together with the leftovers of teenage criminals Geoff and Adam wouldn’t take in, he could still remember the way they all gagged and looked away every time Jon showed up at their hideout reeking of copper and stained crimson. It had been part of reason why Miles eventually decided it was time Jon went his separate ways, that on top of his increasing loyalty to Fakehaus (specifically, one person in Fakehaus), and Jon figures it’d be the same way he went out around Kovic and Greene, that they’d eventually get sick, literally, of seeing him walk in like an extra in a horror movie.

But they don’t. He continues to walk in, covered in blood, and not one of them cares.

He washes himself off in the shower attached to Adam’s fluffy, fancy penthouse bedroom, rinses drying blood off his skin from a man whose name he couldn’t even remember now, and lathers his hair and lets the water fall over him until it runs clear. He’s leaning back against the sink, brushing his teeth with a spare toothbrush, wrapped up in a towel, and contemplating crashing here for the night, to avoid the long drive back home, when the door opens.

Jon’s friendly with the crew, it’s no secret. He can have pleasant conversation with them all, and considers them all good friends, for all intents and purposes. They give him a place to crash that isn’t his apartment across town. But there’s almost like an unspoken rule surrounding what Jon does outside of the crew, that they all let him steam and cool off on his own, and to let him approach them when he’s not fired up with adrenaline. They let him shower, let him sleep, let him eat, whatever, and are more than happy to carry on a conversation afterward, when Jon’s bored of being alone. Everyone under Kovic’s wing follows this silent agreement.

Everyone, except Lawrence.

Lawrence steps into the bathroom without a word, closes the door behind him, and tries to subtly lock the door, but Jon’s not blind, and notices when he does. Jon slows down his teeth brushing, grey eyes staring up at him, unmoving, because he knows Lawrence well enough to know there aren’t any ill intentions here. Jon might be vulnerable, at the moment, but he’s not worried, and he’s not scared. Not of Lawrence. “Yes?” he asks, around the toothbrush, before turning away from him to rinse his mouth out, the mint already starting to burn. There’s no answer. 

Jon turns back after he’s done, ready to start throwing out answers  _ for _ Lawrence, to fill the uncomfortable silence that’s settled between them. But when he does, Lawrence’s hand is on his cheek, and he’s moving into Jon’s space and pressing their lips together, all before Jon has a chance to say anything. He crumbles, like he always does under Lawrence’s touch, lets himself lean back against the sink again, allows Lawrence closer to him, feels a hand on his hip, just at the top of the towel still around his waist, and almost caves when he feels a thigh move between his legs. His hands are up to Lawrence’s hair almost immediately, but he has to bite back the disappointed whimper on his lips when Lawrence pulls away from the kiss, and from him, leaving the air around him cold. “Lawr-”

Fingers brush against a cut on his upper arm, then against a bruise on his cheek, both unfortunate, but minor, byproducts of his side work. “You need to be more careful, if you’re going to keep doing this,” is all Lawrence says, finally. His voice holds concern that Jon doesn’t want to think too hard about, and a sort of commanding tone that he doesn’t want to argue with, so he keeps his mouth shut, this once. But Lawrence doesn’t say anything else, just turns and unlocks the bathroom door, and leaves, and Jon doesn’t move for a while.

_ (He pretends his lips don't tingle as he lays in the spare bedroom, and ignores how his heart beats in his chest, and knows he's irrational, because he wasn't meant to love and be loved.) _

 

* * *

 

Heists were always the most stressful time for Fakehaus, and the guys always left the apartment with their shoulders tense and fire in their eyes, like one wrong word would set them off. Jon wouldn’t know, personally, about how stressful they could be; he never got himself that involved with the crew, and instead of tagging along with them to shoot up a bank and blow up the police, he usually stayed tucked away back at their apartment, watching the chaos unfold on the news. As fun as their brand of mischief sounded, and as fun as it looked, Jon’s a careful person, and he couldn’t afford to let himself get careless and end up hurt. He cares about them, he wouldn’t lie, but not enough to throw himself into a firefight between Los Santos’ finest. He hasn’t cared about anyone like that in a really long time.

They come back in varying stages of wounded and exhausted around two AM; Adam’s limping, one leg wrapped up tight in bandages, while Matt walks in with nothing but a couple of bruises on his hands were he had fallen. Jon watches them all with curious eyes, listens to retellings of the events, like he hadn’t seen them himself from the safety of the top of Eclipse Towers, and moves himself over to let Bruce and Spoole sit on the couch to rest their legs.

Lawrence doesn’t move from the doorway, and his eyes don’t move from Jon. Jon pretends not to notice, pretends to be casual and unaware, where Adam and James were both watching him, because they know, the whole crew knows at this point, but Jon won’t give them the satisfaction of confirmation. He pushes his hair back from his face and glances up over at Lawrence, relaying with his eyes what he couldn’t say with his lips, and wonders when non-verbal communication became something they were good at. No one picks up on it, even as Lawrence excuses himself from the apartment with a half-hearted reason, and not even when, a few moments later, Jon rises from his place next to Spoole and says he’s going to head out now. 

If they do pick up on it, none of them say a thing. Jon decides, if nothing else, he likes this crew for their lack of questions.

Lawrence is sitting on the air vents snaking across the edge of the roof when he finds him, wind blowing hard and cold against Jon as he makes his way over to him and takes his seat to his right. He’s passed a pack of cigarettes, and takes one without a word, lighting it up with the lighter in his pocket and taking a drag off of it. The smoke burns his lungs, but he doesn’t say anything as Lawrence exhales into the night and ashes rain down on the city below. “They already know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jon says, letting the cigarette dangle from between his fingers. “We’re not quiet about it.”

“I thought you wanted to be quiet about it.”

Jon offers a weak shrug; he did, before, when he wanted to sort through the mess in his head, to get a bearing on where he wanted to take things, before they tipped off the rest of them. Things never work out well for him, though. Sorting through things was something he never had time for, and now he’s stuck like this. He takes another lung full of smoke before he answers. “What’s done is done.”

He ignores Lawrence’s eyes on him, hands him the pack when he sees him toss the butt of his cigarette of the edge, and focuses on the way the embers fall away with the ashes. 

_ (He ends up watching the lights dance off of his glasses, and settle on the chiseled angles of his jaw, and wants everything he has, but ignores the tug toward him in his heart, and feels foolish for it in the first place.) _

They sit in silence for an hour, before Jon rises and decides to get home, properly, this time. Lawrence stops him and kisses him before he does, with lips and a tongue that taste like smoke, before Jon leaves, the rest of the pack of cigarettes heavy in his pocket. He gets home just after three, and collapses on his bed, and tries to ignore the gnawing feeling in his chest that makes him wish for more than he has.

 

* * *

 

They never have sex in Adam's apartment; it's a rule they both decided on, somewhere when the lines between coworker and lover started blurring. Lover was a stretch, but it was true, if nothing else. They weren't dating, this wasn't  _ serious _ , just them letting off steam to each other in a very raw, pleasurable way, that didn't include throwing punches or shooting each other. But when they decide the stress and weight on their shoulders it too much, they don't go at it in Adam's apartment. It would be like an invasion of privacy, and would make this feel like they were two lovestruck dumbasses looking to get off because of how bad they “needed each other”, or something stupid and sappy Jon can already hear Joel say in his ears.

_ (He wishes they were lovestruck dumbasses, that he could call this more than a fling, or stress relief, or whatever it was, have more of him than what he was given, because he was never a person content with what he had, and when it came to him, God he was so selfish.) _

Lawrence is eyeing him like he wishes the rule didn't exist. Jon is draped on the only other chair in the living room, legs across one arm rest and back propped up against the other, shirt hiked up just enough on his stomach that it shows a sliver of skin and the top band of elastic on his boxers. He knows Lawrence's eyes are soaking it all up from across the room, where he's got his arms crossed over his chest and face angled downwards, and it sends a chill up Jon’s spine, makes a heat settle in his gut. That look only ever meant good things, and he's already excited for what he's in for later.

He couldn't tell you what Adam was talking about. It was a crew meeting, which, technically, included Jon, but Jon usually reserved these times to seeing how many buttons he could push, and how far, before Lawrence couldn't take it. This was a game, to Jon, and one he was so very much winning, even if Lawrence didn't realize it; he knew all his weaknesses in bed, every way to make him melt and become palliable for him, even when Lawrence was in control. He had prided himself on it, and group meetings, where Lawrence couldn’t stop him, couldn’t pin him down and shut him up, were the best time to show off his new-found power over Fakehaus’ resident tech expert.

Jon’s relationship with Lawrence gave him a sense of power and control nothing else in his life had. 

Adam finishes what he was talking about, and he’s surrounded by the crew talking about getting lunch, or going up to Chilliad, or going back to someone’s apartment to play games, and soon the apartment is silent, and empty. Jon tosses his legs over the armrest, standing up and fixing his shirt, before there’s breath against the back of his neck and a hand on his where he had been messing the top of his jeans. “My place in an hour.”

Jon tries not to be ashamed of himself when he shows up to Lawrence’s apartment twenty minutes later.

 

* * *

 

Something weird has to be said about the way Jon’s pulled into the crew, slowly, to the point where he doesn’t even realize it until he’s already there. He considers himself an observant guy, and was able to tell when Miles wanted less to do with him, or when Geoff started buddying up to him when Ryan was hurt and unable to do what he did, or even when Lawrence started giving him bedroom eyes from across Adam’s apartment before the first time they had sex. Jon picks up on a lot, and no one really gives him credit for it, but he’s a little ashamed, and maybe a bit disappointed, that he wasn’t able to tell when the crew became less of his place to hang out when he wasn’t working, because it was an open door, and he didn’t mind their company, and maybe even cared for them, and became more of the place to hang out because he genuinely enjoyed being around these people, and because he was starting to think he’d throw his life down for them.

Adam invites him along for drinks one night. It’s a luxury bar, the kind Jon doesn’t normally go to, despite his money and his expensive tastes, but the others look right at home against neon-lit booth seats and fancy alcohol. He’s nursing some fruity drink that glows under the black lights, and watching Joel and Spoole try to teach Peake how to dance, and Bruce and James actually dance, when a body slides into the booth next to him. He doesn’t look, at first, going through a laundry list of excuses he has ready for when the person opens their mouth to hit on him, but is (pleasantly) surprised when he turns and finds Lawrence smiling at him over his drink. “Oh, and here I was, preparing the rejected speech.”

“I’m wounded,” Lawrence says with a chuckle. He looks good tonight, Jon decides, wearing that black button up that hugs his arms and chest well, with his hair slicked back. He’s relaxing back against leather seats with a drink his hand, watching Jon like he’s hanging on his every word, and Jon soaks up the attention like a sponge.

_ (He craves domesticity like he needs air, and doesn’t stop the thoughts of waking up in the morning and pulling that shirt on, wondering if he’d look good with it laying against love bites and scratches as he leans against the counter and watches breakfast be made.) _   
  
“You can’t blame me for having one ready,” Jon fires back, ready for the usual go-around, for when they drink away some of the tension, then work out the rest in bed. “I get hit on a lot anytime I go out, and I don’t need to be drug back home by some half drunken stranger.”

The way Lawrence looks at him is… Jon doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t get a good look at his eyes, before it’s gone. “You let me do that.”

Jon  _ blushes _ , feels heat rise to his cheeks and wills away the way his heart leaps into his throat. The other’s aren’t around anywhere nearby to witness this downward spiral of Jon’s self control, and his handle on whatever these squishy feelings are in his stomach. “You’re not a stranger.”

It goes silent between them. The music of the bar feels the space between them, loudly, and Jon’s going to have a headache tomorrow, but he’s going to have it alone, because he’s not going to go home with Lawrence, not tonight. The alcohol’s making him think too much, and the jump in his heart and the jolt in his stomach are telling him he’d crumble once Lawrence got his hands on him. He’d rather have him like this, where it’s just sex, than not have him at all.

_ (Not worth being loved, not worth being loved.) _   
  
Lawrence chuckles, to himself, and takes a drink of the amber liquid in his glass. “You got me there, Jon,” he said, laughter in his voice, and Jon hangs on the way he says his name, feels shame run up his spine hot and cold at the same time. He wants to go home now.

He pardons himself with a weak excuse that he feels sick, and makes it around the corner from the bar before he leans against the wall and tries to calm him breathing over his sobs.

 

* * *

 

There’s a note to be made on the way blood slides between his fingers, how it smells and how it looks, and Jon’s no stranger to any of them. He appreciates the aesthetics of blood, but the feeling of being queasy at the sight of it never truly fades away, and hasn’t, ever since he was a child, and he’d all but pass out at every scraped knee. Now he has to hold back the bile rising in his throat, burning his chest and mouth, because he’s not supposed to look weak when he works; he’s supposed to look in control and calm. He can save getting sick for later, when he’s alone.

Jon doesn’t like working with Ryan. He generally avoids the Fake AH crew when he can, anyway, since, in everyone else’s eyes, he’s become a lapdog for Fakehaus’ hacker, but there’s only a few people he knows that would stomach work like this. Ryan’s one of them. Jon never knows which of them favors bloody, violent work more, but Ryan surely looks like he did, silent and tall, scary with a mask or his face paint. Jon’s grateful he doesn’t feel the need to wear it around him, at least. Sometimes being alone with Ryan scared the hell of out him on its own.

Ryan’s watching him now, watching him scrub down the floors of his warehouse with chemicals that burn his nose and dry his hands out, but he doesn’t say anything. They’ve already disposed of the body, and now was just left with the messy clean up work. Jon could already feel that cash in his pocket, and was glad he kept the gun for hire tag, even after Miles’ kicked him out. It was good work, even if it swayed his moral compass around, made his skin itch when the blood dried, and ruined a few of his favorite shirts. Jon’s so caught up in his head, that Ryan’s voice startles him when he speaks. “Why do you still do this?”

Jon looks up at him. Ryan’s not a man of many words outside of his crew, and Jon should feel honored he spoke at all to him. But he furrows his brow anyway. “Uh, the money? Why else would I do this?” he says, going back to scrubbing at the stain on the concrete.

“I’m asking for Lawrence.”

He freezes. He knows Geoff and Adam are on tense, but friendly terms, mutual respect between them and all, and knows the rest of the crews are, too. Lindsay and Elyse hang out quite a bit, and he’s walked in to see Ray and Peake talking rifles and scopes on more than one occasion. Lawrence wasn’t a very social guy outside of the immediate group, though, and never thought that maybe he was friendly with Fake AH, too, like his crewmates. He never thought he was friendly with  _ Ryan _ , specifically. He doesn’t know how to approach this, approach the implications behind Ryan asking about Jon’s outside-the-crew-work for Lawrence, so he does it with caution. “Why?”

_ (He wants to believe Lawrence worries about him, wants to believe he asks others to keep eyes on him when he works, so he doesn’t wind up being the dead body in the river instead, but he can’t, he can’t. He was too fucked up for that.) _

“No one’s blind, Risinger,” Ryan says. Jon sits up and stares up at Ryan, gripping the cleaning brush in his hand. “Everyone knows about you and Lawrence.”

“I think you’re severely mistaken, Haywood,” he throws back. He doesn’t want them to know that he wants more. “It’s not like that.”

Ryan crosses his arms. “You hook up with him, have sex, whatever you want to call it. You’re involved with him, though, as more than crewmates, or acquaintances, and it’s a mutual, consensual thing, right?”

“Well, yeah, I’m-”

“Then rethink your priorities, is all I’m going to say.”

He leaves without another word, and Jon sits there in dead silence for a while, before he finishes cleaning and skips Adam’s apartment for Lawrence’s, uses his shower to clean himself off, and welcomes it when they tumble into bed and Jon can avoid thinking too hard about what Ryan said to him.

_ (Rethink your priorities. Rethink your priorities.) _

 

* * *

 

Jon doesn’t really understand why he’s in this position right now.

He could blame it on Adam, and probably would later, when all was said and done, but right now he wishes he wasn’t here. Someone’s trying to push themselves into Los Santos, stepping on all the crews’ toes while they were at it, and Geoff, Adam and Griffon weren’t going to let that shit fly. This guy was throwing a party, a lavish, luxury party with fancy drinks and fancy food, in his Vinewood mansion, and they figured it would be the best time to strike, if any. Jon could spot Ashley and Meg from a mile away, Meg dressed in one of her best disguises with a painted on smile, and Ashley at her hip, arm around her waist. JJ and Ray were standing by the food table, giggling to themselves over the tiny sausages and eying the caviar with disgust, children until the world ended, apparently. Jon felt out of place among the four of them, with their loving glances and quick kisses, and tries to wonder what he did to Adam to deserve this.

Lawrence was his date for this party, and he was looking damn good, too. Jon had never really seen him clean up like this, in a nice suit with his hair styled nicely, and he looked comfortable in it, too. He was still wearing his glasses, and Jon wasn’t sure if he prefered them or his contacts more, but he stopped himself from thinking too far on that one. Jon usually always dressed some sort of nice, and formal was only a tiny step up for him, so he doesn’t consider himself looking any nicer than normal in a suit jacket and a bowtie, and he can’t say he hates being a bit more put together than usual, with the way Lawrence is eying him across the top of his drink.

_ (He wants to grab him by that stupid tie and kiss him, kiss him until he passes out, or the world ends, because he won’t deny that he’s in love anymore, and all he wants to do is shout it to the world, let everyone know how it feels to be so in love with someone, but instead he lets it boil quietly inside his chest.) _   
  
Meg approaches them without Ashley on her hip, red lips pulled into a frown and casting glances over her shoulder at their host, handing them an iPhone. It’s not her’s. Probably a disposable one Griffon got for this mission. “It’s taken Caiti some time, but here’s a layout of the house. There’s a room with no marked entrances, so I’d look there for something we can get this guy on. Passcode is six, three, six, five.”

Lawrence takes it and nods. “Alright. Thanks.”

She flashes him her actress smile and turns to head back over to Ashley, melting back into the conversation with the group they’re standing in. Jon watches her, then sets down his glass of expensive wine that doesn’t taste nearly as good as the kind Joel gets, and follows Lawrence out of the main room where they party is being held, and into a hallway, where the noise and soft music becomes muted. Sound proofing, maybe? Jon made a note to tell JJ about it later. Lawrence’s dress shoes click against the tile, one hand looking over the map Meg gave them, the other working to loosen his tie. “I think it’s just up here,” Lawrence says, voice lowered. 

“Hopefully. We’re running the risk of getting caught,” Jon says quietly. “I saw guards, and I know there’s no way he’s keen on having his competition here. Meg and Ashley might be disguised for tonight, but us and Ramsey’s kids aren’t.”

Lawrence hums in agreement, stopping and facing a wall. There’s nothing special about it, despite how Jon thought it’d be like Zelda, with some special marking, showing that this wall had something hidden behind it. But there’s nothing different about it, and it blends with the walls around it, but they both put their hands on it, pressing against it. “It’s here,” Lawrence says, stepping back and crossing his arms. “How does he get it open…”

Jon runs his eyes over it, trying to find a notch or a button, or something, before Lawrence spins him around, pressing him back against it and pinning him in place. “Lawrence what ar-” His sentence is cut off with lips pressed against his, a hand resting on his hip and the other running fingers through his hair and, suddenly, Jon doesn’t care what he was doing. He returns the kiss, wrapping his arms around Lawrence’s neck and holding him closer, and Lawrence’s hand slides off his hip and to the wall behind him, pressing him back closer to it. Jon melts against him at the feeling of his blunt nails against his scalp, lets their lips slide together and loves the way he can smell Lawrence’s cologne and his aftershave, before he hears a voice.

“O-Oh, wow… Uh…”

Lawrence pulls back from him, still flush against him, and looks over at the source. One of the host’s guards are standing there, a thin looking black-haired kid in a nice navy suit, his cheeks bright red. Lawrence just smiles, sheepishly. “Sorry, we got a little carried away,” he lies, and Jon tries to regulate his breathing, ignores the stab in his chest. 

_ (Just an act, just an act. That’s all he was.) _

“N-No, it’s, uh…” the kid chokes out, before he turns and leaves them alone without another word. 

Lawrence pulls away from him when he does, hand lingering on Jon’s hip as he pushes himself off the wall. “Shit, that was close,” he mumbles to himself. Jon stuffs his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, steps to the side as Lawrence steps forward, pressing down on the wall where Jon’s hip had been, and watching it open for them. “But, we found out how to open it.” And then Lawrence is smiling over at him. Jon only manages a small one back.

 

* * *

 

Rumors were commonplace for Jon, especially when they were about him. He had been dealing with them for years, since his name started popping up in the mouths of criminals around Las Venturas, and he had learned to not let them bother him. Usually, they were baseless, with no evidence that could back them up on whether they were real or not, and they were started with some no-name kid that wanted to make it big in a city where four people ran the show. So Jon stopped giving them his time, or his energy, stopped caring that his name was in the mouths of people he’d never meet face to face. Because, really, you could say a lot about someone whose life you didn’t know, safe in the belief that you’d never have to face the consequences, and he knew that’s all it was.

_ (rumors are rumors are rumors are rumors) _

Jon starts caring a little more the moment he starts hearing his name next to Lawrence’s.

He’s hanging out with the Los Santos Times trio down the street from the building at the Starbucks they favored, drinking coffee and swapping stories at a table outside, warm wind blowing across them, when he accidentally eavesdrops on a neighboring conversation.

“- no, no, I promise you, I heard this. Their tech guy is involved with that one kid.”

Jon leans back in his chair, keeping his eyes on his coffee, to pretend he was still in the middle of the conversation, listening to the one going on behind him.

“What kid?”

“He’s the one who does all their brutal work. Real blood thirsty. He’s like um… that one lady, that bathed in blood to stay young?”

“Ugh, gross. How could you involve yourself with someone like that?”

“Mr. Tech Kid isn’t much better. I’ve heard there was some weird shit about him, too, but I don’t think he’s as crazy as-”

“Wow, Barbara,” Arryn says loudly, suddenly. Jon jumps and looks over at her, seeing JJ and Barbara turn to her with confusion on their faces. “What an interesting story about Fakehaus! They send out hitmen to silence people who talk bad about them? Definitely will keep me silent.”

Barbara goes to say something, but sees the look in Arryn’s eyes, and realization flashes across her face. The two girls at the table behind Jon go silent. “Oh, yeah, totally. I heard they really make them suffer. They’re ruthless like that, you know?”

“Yeah, my uncle got nabbed by them,” JJ throws in, glancing at Jon. Jon’s silent. “I haven’t seen him in six months.”

“Oh, so they never come back?” Barbara asks, wide eyes. Her acting lessons with Elyse have been paying off.

“Not at all,” Arryn snickers, propping her elbow up and resting her cheek in her hand. 

Jon hears chairs scrape against the concrete, and the girls walk past them, faces pale and hands death grips on their coffee, and Jon feels proud. His table mates watch them walk past, before they turn their attention on him, and he feels his stomach bottom. “Are you alright?” JJ asks. “You look kinda sick.”

“Yeah, they were saying some pretty… Intense stuff…” Barbara says softly, her voice noted with concern. Her eyes show concern. Jon doesn’t deserve it.

_ (He wishes he deserved it, deserved them as friends watching out for their friend, who has to listen to people talk shit about lives they don’t know, talk about them like they know them, but they’ll never know them, and he’ll never know what it feels to call him his, anyway.) _

“I’m fine,” he says, offering them a little wave of his hand, silencing the conversation, and he’s grateful when they get the hint and stop talking about it, going back to whatever they were talking about before, and leaving him alone with his thoughts.

 

* * *

 

Jon’s apartment is nice, with huge windows overlooking Los Santos and all the twinkling lights from cars and street poles and buildings. He’s always prided himself on appreciating the aesthetics life gives him, tall buildings with great views, sunsets against the ocean, freshly fallen snow on the mountains. He was a photographer before he was ever a criminal, and even after finding a life waiting for him in the illegal, he maintained that eye for photography, although he rarely practiced it now. Having his name attached to art after he’s drug it through the mud would be as absurd as it sounded.

_ (He loves art, of all kinds, and he is the greatest work of art he’s ever seen, chiseled jaw and lopsided smile, the angel God cast from heaven, here to tempt him and tease him what he couldn’t touch, and he had the taste of the wine on his lips, and now he wanted the body it belonged to, wanted that last sin as a check in a box on the list of his life.) _

He’s lifting his camera’s viewfinder now, snapping pictures of the city, hands rusty working the buttons and focusing the shot, but he comes back to it like a kid comes back to a bicycle; he never truly forgot. And the city does look pretty tonight. He could put it off, take pictures another night, but he’s in the mood, in a mood for art and for photography, and it’s more rare lately than he’d like to admit, so he takes it. He alone tonight, anyway, nowhere to be, no one to see, no stupor to drink himself into, because that’d become more common than he’d like to admit. It's just him and his thoughts, alone in his apartment.

Jon sits on the couch, looking through the photos on his camera, as his dog curls at his feet, looking up at him, silently. He shuts it off, setting it on the coffee table and reaching down, rubbing behind her ears and smiling when she leaned her head into his touch. “Hey, Bella… Sorry I’ve been gone so much lately, girl…” he says quietly, wonders if Lawrence would think he’s weird for talking to his dog, but decides not to think too much about Lawrence. He’s not with him right now. His opinion doesn’t matter. “I’ve been busy… You know that, right?”

Bella looks at him, eyes unblinking, and Jon wants to believe she does know, and understands, in a weird way. It’d make him feel better, if nothing else, and he needs to feel better. He gives her head a little pat, then gets up from the couch. Her tags jingle on her collar as she followers, and he walks back to his bedroom, striping his shirt off and tossing it to his clothes hamper, before slipping out of his jeans, leaving them on the floor at the foot of his bed. Bella lays next to them, watching him slip into the bathroom and close the door behind him.

Jon knows that dark bags under his eyes and bruises against his hips will greet him if he looks in the mirror, but he glances anyway, running his fingers over the purple blotches peaking out over the top of his boxers’ waistband. They’ve both been more stressed as normal, he wasn’t going to lie to himself and say he didn’t enjoy the dull sting he felt when Lawrence pressed his thumbs down there again and again. Jon’s stomach jolts at that thought, turns from the mirror and thumbs off his boxers, then starts his shower.

He washes his guilt, his regret, his shame down the drain with the water, fingers working through his hair with shampoo, ignoring the way his chest tightened imagining them to be Lawrence’s, how they felt running through the dark locks, then sees his eyes, his smile, hears the way he says his name, and  _ fuck _ . He rinses the soap from his hair, trying to will the thoughts away, because,  _ goddammit, _ he didn’t need this, he didn’t fucking need this now, of all times.

_(He can see the white picket fences, the dog, the nice car, the tiny house in the suburbs, can see himself making a real life with him, but he’s so fucked up, he’s such a fucked up person, both in work and in the sheets, and someone like him didn’t deserve things so nice, and the mantra in his head would never let him forget it.)_

_  
(Wasn’t meant to love and be loved. Wasn’t meant to love and be loved.) _

His bed welcomes him with soft pillows and comfortable sheets, and Bella joins him, laying in the empty space next to him, where Lawrence laid at times, and he was so tired, and didn’t even bother stopping himself. This situation with Lawrence was starting to get more complicated, more feelings were being added on his side of things, and it was making everything harder and harder for him. Every time they shared a bed, Jon had to watch Lawrence pull his clothes back on after under the safety of his sheets, in the comfort of darkness, where Lawrence couldn’t see the way he bit his lip, to hold back the  _ don’t go _ on his tongue. Lawrence didn’t know, Jon couldn’t blame him, couldn’t blame him for the hurricane in his head, tossing emotions and thoughts around faster than Jon could keep up with. But god, sometimes he wished Lawrence would notice, notice the way Jon’s hands linger on him, notice how gentle Jon touched him, or held his face and stared him in the eyes, breathless and blushing. He just wished this could be easier, in every way it could be, because maybe then, Jon wouldn’t spend sleepless nights alone, thinking too much.

He runs his fingers through Bella’s fur, wills himself to sleep, unready to later, rinse, repeat, his day tomorrow.

_ (Wasn’t meant to be loved. Wasn’t meant to be loved.) _   
  


 

* * *

 

“What are we?”

Jon speaks before he thinks, like always, and this time, he really wishes he could have capped it just this once. Lawrence pauses on the edge of Jon’s bed, where he had been reaching down to grab his clothes off the floor, his back to him. He had scratches over his shoulder blades, and Jon feels a swell of joy in him, to know he left a mark on Lawrence, somehow, before eyes are on him, and he wants to disappear under his blankets. 

“What?” Lawrence asks, brows lowered in confusion, watching Jon intently. 

He can't lie his way out of this one, he knows it. Jon sits up, to make himself more level with Lawrence's eyes, sheets pooling in his lap. Cold wind blows across his chest, across the bruises on his collarbone that would take a week to heal. “What are we, Lawrence? What is… this, that we’ve been doing for like a year. What is any of this?” The stalls Lawrence, whose face drops to something unreadable and neutral, and Jon’s  _ terrified _ of the outcomes here, for a moment. “Everyone thinks we’re something. I mean, fuck, a few weeks ago I heard some gossiping teenagers talking about how we’re dating, before Arryn shut them up. But… we’re not, are we? This isn’t us dating.”

_ (The two possible outcomes swirl around in his head like tornados, and all he can see is the one where his life is bitter rejection and laughter, because why would he think this was anything other than sex, why would he let himself fall in love, knowing that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted, why why why.) _

“Jon,” Lawrence says, quietly. Jon’s chest tightens, but he doesn’t look away, keeps his eyes straight on Lawrence’s, tries to look composed and hardened on the outside, despite feeling fragile like glass inside, ready for that one wrong word that’ll shatter him into a thousand pieces, and he’ll have to pick them all up and mend them back together. He didn’t want to do that, not today, not over Lawrence, not when he already felt like he was on the verge of collapse and-

_ (Wouldn’t be the first time, wouldn’t be the first time, wouldn’t be the first time-) _

“I didn’t know you wanted anything more.”

Jon’s head goes silent. The room around him is deafeningly quiet, and Lawrence looks… soft. His eyes are patient, watching him, his tone understanding, almost relieved? Jon won’t let him say that, he can’t say that. “I do,” he squeaks out, curls his fists in the sheets as the dam breaks between his head and his mouth. “I’ve wanted more for months, Lawrence. The sex is great, don’t get me wrong, but… God, I want more. I want us to be more than fucking out stress and tension. I… I really care about you, Lawrence, and I-I don’t think I could do this-” He motions between them, and to the bed, to the clothes laying on the floor. “-if I had to keep pretending that you don’t matter to me as anything else but someone to get off with. And I know I-I’m fucked up, I kill people brutally for a living, and m-maybe you deserve someone better than that, because so much could go wrong and-”

_ (wasn’t meant to be loved wasn’t meant to be loved was-) _

“Jon.” This time he’s cut off and there’s hands on his arms. Lawrence has moved closer, and Jon’s lips go still, mouth shutting and eyes on him. The air around them didn’t feel like it did earlier, when they were this close, sharing air and kisses and touches. This felt so much more intimate, felt more personal, and Jon didn’t realize how much more vulnerable he could feel, after already being vulnerable to Lawrence. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Been… feeling, the same, I guess?”

Jon stares at him, fingers curl in the fabric in his lap, feels Lawrence’s hands slide down to his, holding them comfortingly, and his eyes sting. Why would he start crying now? “Y-You have?”   
  
Lawrence smiles, gently. His heart breaks, breaks in the best way. “Yeah. I just didn’t know how to bring it up. You’ve seemed kind of… emotionally distant the past few weeks. I thought you were trying to distance yourself from me.”

He was, but not for the reason Lawrence thinks, and now he regrets it. God, he regrets a lot. “Oh,” he says quietly, heart swelling, fingers squeezing around Lawrence, before he leans in, kissing him and wrapping his arms around his neck, holding him tight against him. Lawrence lets him lead, for the most part, pressing him back into the bed, and it’s so familiar, but feels so different, so nice. Lawrence’s hands are gentle, slow, not rushed like they normally were, their kiss is soft and passionate, not frenzied and heavy. He knows where the touches lead, where the kisses go, how this ends up, but this time it feels quieter, more… loving. It feels just as nice as it ever did, gets him off as quick as usual, but after, him and Lawrence curl up under sheets together, catching their breath through smiles and laughter.

Jon wakes up the next morning to the smell of breakfast, and he thinks he could get used to this.

**Author's Note:**

> [follow me on tumblr!!](http://seanspooles.co.vu/)


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